Al Quaeda men, posing as journalists, assassinated the leader of the Tajiks,Ahmed Shah Massoud, 2 days before the 9-11 attacks. He was the only significant non-pashtun leader who threatened the Taliban's control of Afghanistan. The quid pro quo was and is quite obvious, and suggests that the Taliban leadership knew that something big was in the offing. Did they "know" that Al Quaeda men were about to run 4 airplanes into large buildings in the U.S.? Probably not. But they certainly knew that they were about to provide a higher level of "hospitality" to Usama's people than had previously been the case.

I don't know. A quid pro quo was already established between the two organizations well before the Massoud assassination and the 9/11 attacks.

Bin Laden helped fund the Taliban, and al Qaeda members took part in Taliban battles. The Taliban provided bin Laden with a safe haven, and allowed him to operate training camps, and refused to extradite him after the embassy bombings in the late '90's.

But I have never seen any evidence suggesting the Taliban helped plan 9/11, or that they even had any knowledge of it.

There are good reasons to think the opposite. First off, I've never seen any evidence presented by the US to suggest otherwise. Why wouldn't this be revealed if it existed?

Furthermore, attacking the US does not promote longevity when you are small, poor and weak. The response would be easily predictable, even for Taliban leaders. Targeting the US was al Qaeda's agenda, and it served al Qaeda's interest. But that is not true of the Taliban. The Taliban was still fighting the Northern Alliance - why would it want to provoke the world's biggest superpower?

And finally, the Taliban did offer to extradite bin Laden to Pakistan for trial. Was the offer serious? No way to tell - the offer was rejected, so we'll never know.

I confess to hoping Obama would be a better Prez. I didn't expect it, but I did think he was our best chance for restoring sanity after the Bush debacle. There was no chance of that with either McCain or Clinton.

But it didn't take long for Obama to disappoint. On civil liberties, the Ds really are just as bad as the Rs.

Which just feeds back into my ever hardening worldview - we're just screwed. The world is going off the rails, and the conductor still has his foot pressing hard on the accelerator.

We should take down the Statue of Liberty, replace her with the Grim Reaper, who's inscription will be "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

would Joe Lieberman have been any better as the vice-president than Cheney?

Nope.

I'm going to be engaging in a much higher rate of deletions -- without any concern about whether they're scrupulously fair -- and what you just said, which I've heard from many people here and believe myself -- is exactly the reason why.

Sounds good to me. Preserving a viable signal to noise ratio is always a good idea.

While we're on the topic - please convert to a thread based comment section! I realize I whine about this every so often, but it would be a wonderful change. If I recall correctly, Glenn does not have the power to change the comment format. But maybe enough complaining will give Glenn some leverage to get the techies to make the switch. Here's hoping.

Quite related to all of this: The Nation's Chris Hayes today examines how many liberal advocacy groups allow themselves to be controlled by the White House and subject themselves to collective message coordinating.

Indeed.

But how to fight it? The system is so powerful, and has so many ways of punishing those who stand up to it, and rewarding those who go along. It may be vile, but unfortunately it is also firmly entrenched.

I honestly can't think of what to do that will make much difference. The third party threat has been effectively eliminated over the last 20 years. Protests are now simply shunted aside, or not given permits, or protesters are simply arrested or beaten for no reason at all. The media doesn't cover them anyway. And they have become passe - people seem bored with them, they are old hat.

The population seems awfully quiescent. Probably due at least in part because everyone is either afraid of losing their job, or doesn't have time for the responsibilities of citizenship because they are simply exhausted from their job (or jobs). Another master stroke in the design of the system.

Bloggers like Glenn provide a valuable service - they can spend the time to dig into topics and get to the heart of an issue, or fully explore a particular side of an issue.

But for all the blogging going on, there seems to be precious little actual action. The system just blunders on, largely undisturbed.

It's all very depressing.

you have what Dr. Seuss called a butter battle

Any chance you meant a "tweedle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle?"